My mum gave me this little poem a couple of years ago that she had cut from a newspaper. Apparently a reader had sent it in but unfortunately it didn’t say who had written it. Sums up the way a lot of people are feeling after Christmas I think!

I’ve made Beef Stroganoff before using those stir-in packets from the supermarket. I had always thought it would be a complicated recipe to cook. It’s not. This is the first recipe that I tried, from a book called “How to feed your family a healthy, balanced diet with very little money…and hardly any time, even if you have a tiny kitchen, only three saucepans (one with an ill-fitting lid) and no fancy gadgets – unless you count the garlic crusher…” by Gill Holcombe. Yes that IS the title! I bought the book last year sometime when I was browsing in the book shop at The Outlet in Banbridge, Co. Down for just a couple of pounds and have cooked a few recipes from it but so far this one is our favourite.

The book suggests serving with plain boiled rice and salad, but I cooked a small bag of salad potatoes instead and it was delicious.

1kg steak

1 medium onion

250g mushrooms

1 tsp mustard

250ml cream

Butter

Oil

Heat a little oil in a large pan. Cut the steak into fine strips and fry for a minute or so to seal the meat on all sides.

Turn the heat right down and let the steak simmer gently for about 30 minutes.

Add a lump of butter to the pan and fry the finely chopped onions until soft and golden then add the mushrooms and cook for another 2-3 minutes.

Sir in the mustard and cream. Warm through very gently (to stop the cream curdling) for 5-10 minutes.

About a month ago, I decided I wasn’t going to buy a load of ready made biscuits and cakes for Christmas. I was going to make everything myself. I was going to bake rings around myself and made sure I had enough supplies in to bake for everyone I know. I even bought some lovely Christmas gift bags from Lakeland to present them in. Friends were to get bags of cookies and my dad was to get a big batch of toffee to go along with his main present. Great idea? In theory, yes.

In reality though, the only baking I got to do was for child #1’s school play as they were having their annual cake sale straight after it. I didn’t bother taking pictures of anything though as I was going to make more anyway. Unfortunately that was on the 17th December. The night that the snow fell. By the following Monday we had no water (as I mentioned the other day) and it only came back yesterday afternoon.

So now, I have a lot of catching up to do. New Year baking here we come…

It’s been hard to escape talk about the weather over the last few weeks. My kids missed a few days of school when the snow first hit as the roads were just too bad to travel on. When the roads conditions slowly started to improve we returned to school by driving “the long way round” as only the main roads were gritted and we knew they would be safer than travelling on back roads (better to be safe than sorry etc..) To make matters worse we have had no running water in the house since Monday last week and have been relying on filling containers with water from my in-laws whose water supply was relatively unaffected (give or take a couple of days).

When we did eventually start to travel on the road that we would usually use to get to school, we noticed the lake near to our house was completely frozen over and thought I would take a photo of it to feature on the blog before the predicted thaw set in. What actually happened though was that we got so caught up in preparing for Christmas that we didn’t get around to taking pictures until yesterday. So when himself drove us down the lake road, we were really disappointed to find that the thaw on the lake had already started so you can just make out a bit of ice near the shore.

As I type this, the thaw that was promised on the weather reports has well and truly set in yet we still have no water in the house. Maybe tomorrow…

Well, Christmas day has come and gone. This year I was cooking for 8 people – us and both sets of grandparents. Afraid I wouldn’t have enough food for everyone I ended up cooking far too many vegetables. Yesterday morning I was faced with a rather large bowl of mashed potatoes, some Christmas ham and a little turkey (a 9lb turkey shared between 8 people doesn’t leave you with much leftovers!) so when the kids got up they had only one thing on their minds for breakfast – Potato Cakes (or spud cakes as they are known as in our house) so I decided to be a little different and incorporate the turkey and ham into the potato mixture. Here’s how I got on…

Quantities are approximate as I just used what I had but should be ok :)

1lb cold mashed potatoes

50g Flour

Few slices of turkey and ham

In a food processor, finely chop your turkey and ham. Then add your mashed potato and flour and mix until it is all combined.

Finally, here is my second post for the Irish Foodies Christmas Cookalong (I’m blaming the weather for the delay on this post – well we’re blaming it for everything else so why not?!) For my second recipe I chose St Stephen’s Day muffins from Rachel Allen’s Bake. Himself LOVES Christmas pudding but sadly for him, Christmas pudding does not like him very much (by his own admission it “kills him”) so a couple of years ago I tried these out with some pudding that was left over and it went down a treat.

What you need:

1 egg

75ml milk

25g butter

2 tbsp sherry, whiskey or brandy

125g leftover Christmas pudding broken into lumps

125g plain flour

1tsp baking powder

½tsp mixed spice

75g caster sugar

Pre heat the oven to 180ºc, line your chosen muffin tin with paper cases (I usually get about 6 muffins with these quantities)

Whisk the egg in a bowl, then add the milk, melted butter, alcohol and the pieces of Christmas pudding.

Sift the flour, baking powder and mixed spice into another bowl. Add the caster sugar and mix well. Make a well in the centre, add the wet ingredients and mix together until a soft lumpy batter forms.

Spoon the mixture into the paper cases and bake in the oven for 20-25 mins for large muffins, 15-20 mins for buns and 10-15 mins for mini muffins.